Digital Hollywood Spring, 2016

Tuesday, October 20th, 2015

3:50 PM - 5:00 PM

Track I: Salon II - Live Webcast from this Room

Leveraging Content and Celebrity For Cross-Platform Success: Brands and Entertainers Collaborate

Justin Hochberg, CEO, Just Entertainment

Jesse Uram, Brand Partnerships and Digital Content, Creative Artists Agency

Adam Smith, President, Entertainment, United Entertainment Group (UEG)

Bill Sanders, Senior Vice President, Athlete & Talent Marketing, Excel Sports Management

Rob Lee, President and Founder, Bayonne Entertainment

Hiram Garcia, Producing Partner, Seven Bucks Productions

Steven Masur, Senior Partner, Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP, Moderator

media relations and social media plans, and the pursuit of appropriate corporate partners. Bill and the rest of the talent marketing team at Excel Sports Management are dedicated to the development of individual marketing strategies that highlight each client’s strengths, talents and interests.  During his career, Bill has aligned his clients with numerous global brands, including: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Gatorade, Vitamin Water, Visa, American Express, Apple, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, Guinness, Bridgestone, Raymond Weil, Tag Heuer and many more.  Bill earned his MBA, with an emphasis in Marketing and Entertainment Studies, at UCLA. He earned his Bachelors of Arts in Political Science from Loyola Marymount University. Bill also teaches Sports Marketing at UCLA’s Anderson School. He resides in Pacific Palisades, California with his wife, Elizabeth and their son, Brendan.

Rob Lee, President and Founder of Bayonne Entertainment:  Rob Lee is an independent television producer and media executive.  His areas of expertise include all creative and business aspects of entertainment content.  As a creative producer, industry executive, talent manager, agent and lawyer, his nearly 25 years of experience enables him to create and sell valuable original programming as well as uniquely provide valuable advice and strategy to the television and digital marketplace.  With his background and successful track record, Mr. Lee possesses direct access at the highest level to programmers, executives, agents and creative talent.  Since 1999 Mr. Lee has served as the President and founder of Bayonne Entertainment.  Currently, Bayonne is producing ‘Millionaire Matchmaker’ for Bravo (8 cycles), ‘Love In The City’ for OWN, and ‘Euros Of Hollywood’ for Bravo.  Bayonne recently finished production on 7 cycles of ‘Randy Jackson Presents: America’s Best Dance Crew’ (MTV) and ‘House Of Joy’ (NuvoTV).  The company is also producing several pilot presentations for various networks including ‘Fountain of Youth’ for HBO, ‘The Post Game’ for USA, ‘EmBedded’ for E! and ‘Family Love’ for Bravo…to name a few.   In 2012, Bayonne, made an overall production/consulting deal with CORE Media Group (producers of American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance).  As CORE’s consultant, Lee put together its scripted division Halfire/CORE, specializing in direct to series production.  This division now has series in production and development across several broadcast and cable platforms.   Bayonne has also produced the television movies ‘My Future Boyfriend’ (ABC Family) and ‘The Night Before The Night Before Christmas’ – based on a story written by Lee (Hallmark Channel), the highly acclaimed sports documentary ‘Tim Tebow: Everything In Between’ (ESPN) and the 1-hour special for the UP Network, ‘I Forgive You’.   From (2004-2007), Bayonne produced the hit show ‘Blowout’ (Bravo) and used that success to launch the multi-million dollar hair care line Jonathan Product through QVC and Sephora.   While running Bayonne Entertainment, Mr. Lee simultaneously served as Executive VP Worldwide Head of Programming (2007-2008) at IMG Global Media, the world’s largest independent producer and distributor of sports programming and a major player in the world of fashion – owning IMG Models and producing Mercedes Benz’ Fashion Week around the world.  There, he launched the make-up competition television series ‘Blush’ on Lifetime with production partner Proctor & Gamble through its Max Factor label.

Adam Smith is President, Entertainment, at United Entertainment Group (UEG), a global marketing agency specializing in entertainment, sports and brand experiences.  Leading the company’s Los Angeles office, Adam and team focus on the development of strategic entertainment platforms for UEG clients across Film, TV, Music, Celebrity, Live Events and Branded Content. While at UEG, Adam has led the work on a variety of programs including Doritos Crash the Super Bowl, Cheetos and Despicable Me 2, AT&T’s It Can Wait campaign and the development of Williams – Sonoma Thanksgiving special for Cooking Channel “The Voltaggio’s Take On Thanksgiving.” Earlier in his career, Adam served as Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Broadcasting for the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Clippers as well as Vice President of Marketing for The Firm, a leading music management company. While there, he managed sponsorship and brand integration initiatives and spearheaded marketing initiatives for several leading musical talents. Prior to joining UEG, Adam was the President of the Music Division at Davie Brown Entertainment where he led the strategic development and insight for the Omnicom-owned branding and entertainment company. Adam’s primary focus was music sponsorship, music licensing, sourcing music talent and the creation of music platforms.

Jesse Uram is a Brand Coverage and Digital Packaging Agent at leading entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Uram works in the Los Angeles office and represents many of the world’s leading musicians, content creators, and talent in the areas of digital content and branded entertainment. He has worked with such major brands as Canon, J&J, and P&G, as well as such digital distributors as Yahoo and AOL in packaging original series. Jesse began his career at Infinity Media as a Creative Executive shepherding a number of projects.  He joined CAA in 2010. Jesse graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Business of the Cinematic Arts.

Justin Hochberg is the founder of Just Entertainment Inc. a Television and new media studio focusing on branded entertainment and reality TV with projects at half a dozen US networks and working with fortune 500 brands and digital agencies. Over the course of Hochberg's career he created and sold over 40 TV series and completed more than $112 million in product integration deals with broadcast and cable networks and over 150 of the world's leading brands including P&G, the NFL, Pepsi, Sports Illustrated, Royal Caribbean, Marquis Jet, Staples, DirecTV, Planet Hollywood Resorts, Fosters, Las Vegas Convention Visitors Bureau, Dick Clark's “Rockin New Years Eve”, Skype, Ask.com, Camping World, , Deutsch Advertising, NYC 2012, the N.Y.P.D., and Tony Winner “Kinky Boots”. Hochberg made TV headlines recently for guiding four different cable networks into reality programming for their first time, brokering over 20 different branding deals on them. Among them USA Network's first reality series, “The Moment”, hosted by Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner and TNT's "The Great  Escape", an action-packed program Hochberg created and produced with Hollywood greats Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Bertram van Munster. In addition, this past summer he launched “Race to the Scene,” a movie themed competition series for the Reelz Channel hosted by Dolph Lundgren, which Hochberg engineered the sale of to a dozen countries before its US premiere, followed by CNBC's new #1 rated show, “The Profit”. Hochberg was recently nominated for the Critic's Choice Award for Best Reality Series and Real Screen's Best Documentary, and has been recognized as Hollywood Reporter's “50 Most Powerful Reality Producers”. Prior to entering the television industry, Hochberg served as Microsoft Corporation's Director of Business Development for Interactive TV, before becoming the company's Head of Business Development for its Digital Media TV efforts.

Hiram Garcia, Producing Partner, Seven Bucks Productions: Hiram is a passionate filmmaker dedicated to the creation of impactful and needle moving content. He oversees all aspects of the production process to ensure the team’s mission to create inspirational and motivational content for a global audience is achieved. Garcia currently serves as a producer on behalf of Seven Bucks Productions for New Line Cinema’s Shazam! and Teddy Bear Project, Universal Studios The Janson Directive, Relativity’s Not Without Hope, Paramount Pictures’ Baywatch, MGM’s Seal Team 666 and 20th Century Fox’s Big Trouble in Little China. He is currently co-producing New Line Cinema’s Central Intelligence. Other feature film and television credits which have wrapped production include co-producer on New Line Cinema’s San Andreas, associate producer on Paramount Pictures’ Hercules, associate producer on New Line Cinema’s Journey 2 The Mysterious Island, co-executive producer on HBO’s “Ballers" and consulting producer on TNT’s "Wake Up Call." Prior to joining the Seven Bucks team, Garcia was a consulting writer for WWE’s "The Rock" (2011-2013). Hiram Garcia was born and raised in New Jersey and is a graduate of the University of Miami where he earned his Bachelors in Music Business and Entertainment. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

Steven Masur, Senior Partner, Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP: focuses his practice on corporate finance, M&A, intellectual property, strategic transactions, entertainment and new business concepts. He has over 20 years of experience advising digital media and entertainment clients on their corporate and intellectual property transactions and day-to-day business issues. Mr. Masur brings unique strategic business experience to CDAS. He has counseled enterprise level clients including Shazam, Virgin Mobile, Liberty Media, Yamaha, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Bob Vila and Conde Nast Publications in corporate, digital media, and new business matters. He has also helped clients in a wide variety of early stage businesses, including mobile, games, digital music, film, publishing, advertising, retail sales, software and hardware to achieve breakthrough results. Mr. Masur's transactional experience includes a wide variety of deals in angel and venture capital finance, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and other strategic transactions in the US and abroad. He is passionate about helping new businesses break through to the mass market, and frequently assists clients with identifying and formalizing partnership opportunities with Fortune 500 and celebrity brands. Mr. Masur is especially knowledgeable about mobile, internet, social media, emerging content distribution models, e-commerce, games and mobile payments. Mr. Masur serves a variety of corporate and nonprofit boards and industry associations, lectures and regularly writes about major issues in venture capital, emerging businesses, entertainment law, technology and corporate strategy.